Bale accumulators of various types are well known within the baling art. Such accumulators are used in conjunction with square bales of crop stock, loose stacks of crop stock, and cylindrical bales of crop stock of varying diameters. Bale accumulators are generally designed and constructed to receive a plurality of bales of crop stock, typically hay or straw bales, from a baler and to temporarily store the received bales, all without the performance of manual labor by an individual, until they can be delivered to a permanent storage location. While long known in the art, bale accumulators have taken on an increasing level of importance in the farming community as the number of available persons for performing physical labor has decreased in that same community. At least partially as a result of this decrease in available labor, farmers have tended to want to increase the size of the bales of crop stock so as to reduce the overall number of bales that must be handled and have tended to rely on mechanical means for manipulating the bales as desired.
Examples of bale accumulators are found, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,157,295 to Pridgeon, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,598 to Schurz; U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,794 to Shaw; U.S. Pat. No. 4,190,391 to Sesser, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,199 to Fontrier; U.S. Pat. No. 4,376,607 to Gibson; U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,845 to Carpenter; U.S. Pat. No. 4,619,570 to Siebenga; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,646 to Elias, et al. The accumulators disclosed in the foregoing patents often rely on complex mechanical apparatus to function and are not readily able to handle the large cylindrical bales currently finding widespread favor in the farming community. These bales may fall within a weight range of about 500 pounds to about 2500 pounds and have diameters between 3 feet and 6 feet.
In a typical baling operation, a large cylindrical bale is baled by a baler pulled by a motive source of power, such as a farm tractor, that is operated by the farmer. The baler usually takes the form of including a front portion and a rear discharge gate pivotally mounted thereto that together with the front portion forms therewithin a bale forming chamber. When a bale is formed, the rear discharge gate will be pivoted open and the bale will be discharged onto the ground. The end result is a large number of these large bales being scattered across a field that need to be gathered and stored in a single location.
As part of the typical bale discharge operation, the farmer must usually stop the baler, back up a short distance, and then open the discharge gate of the baler. The backing up step is necessary since the baler must be pulled forward during the bale discharge. If the baler were not first backed up, unbaled crop stock would be left lying in the field as the baler was pulled ahead for the discharge of the formed bale. To avoid this problem, farmers and baler manufacturers have long sought a bale "kicker" or some similar device that would push the bale away from the baler so as to obviate the need for the backing up step. One such bale "kicker" or "pusher is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,159,876 to Olin. While these kickers or pushers are somewhat successful, they still leave the bales of crop stock scattered across the field.
It would be desirable to have a bale accumulator for bales of the size falling within the aforementioned range that provided the farmer with the option of conveying a plurality of bales to a single desired storage location or of depositing a plurality of bales at a plurality of locations in the field so as to ease the later accumulation and storage of the bales at the desired storage location.